Field of the Disclosure
The present application relates to an image up-scale device and method of up-scaling an image.
Background
Display devices may display various types of image data. Image data may, for example, be captured by a still photo or a digital video camera, obtained from a still photo archive, generated through a software application, received through a broadcast or streaming medium, etc. The display devices may be integrated with a variety of electrical appliances. For example, the display devices may be integrated with desktop computers, laptop computers, computer workstations, personal digital assistants, mobile device (e.g., mobile phones), wireless communication devices, multimedia devices, cameras, and exclusive viewing stations such as television receivers. Such display devices include liquid crystal display (LCD) devices, cathode ray tube (CRT) display devices, plasma display devices, projection display devices, organic light emitting diode display devices, and so on.
In general, a display device may have a native maximum resolution. The number of pixels of an image being displayed on the display device may be limited to the native maximum resolution. The display device may receive an image with this native maximum definition or less. As such, image data or information having a smaller number of pixel data signals than the total number of pixels of the display may be provided. In this case, the display device may “up-scale” the low resolution image data into higher resolution image data. To this end, the display device may generate additional pixels by performing interpolation for the lower resolution image data.
Image up-scaling becomes more important as display devices become larger. Interpolation methods such as bi-linear interpolation, bi-cubic interpolation, cubic spline interpolation, Lanczos interpolation, and edge-directed interpolation (EDI) are being applied for image up-scaling. Such interpolation methods generate additional pixel data signals using data signals of pixels adjacent to one another. Due to this, such interpolation methods may require a large number of line memories. For example, each of the bi-cubic interpolation and the Lanczos interpolation may be performed on sixteen pixel data signals of pixels adjacent to one another in order to create an additional pixel data signal. In this case, each of the bi-cubic interpolation and the Lanczos interpolation may need to be repeatedly performed a total of five times. In such a case, at least four line memories must be used for each of the bi-cubic interpolation and the Lanczos interpolation. Moreover, a sync function may need to be used to determine weight values of the adjacent pixels. This sync function may typically be defined by third degree polynomials. Due to this, the computations for the sync function may largely increase.